by Kevin Hearne
The shoals of Red Beard’s facial hair mash together in the space where his mouth is supposed to be. He’s biting back an angry retort. But Mogen has them trained well. After a moment, he gives a curt nod and says, “It is.”
“Do you have a ship?”
Korda answers. “No; our ship returned ahead of us with some emergency supplies. We were going to beg passage south on a merchant vessel in exchange for work.”
“Good. You’ll go on my ship, then,” I say to Red Beard. “I’ll have a room for you at the Pelican by the docks. They have Hathrim-size ceilings. These lovely gentlemen,” I say as I gesture to the crossbowmen on the right, “will escort you there.” Pointing to the crossbowmen on the left, I continue, “And these fine worthies will escort you, Korda, to our largest room here, and should you need anything in particular, please ask one of them and it will be brought to you.”
They make noises of gratitude and depart with their heavily armed escorts. Dhingra sidles up to me once the doors close.
“Load only ten bags of grain into the hold and call it a clerical error, assuring them that we’ll give them more.”
“Will we?”
“Of course not. But make sure Red Beard delivers that two-month deadline to Gorin Mogen. Take the best head count you can, especially of their military forces, and get back up here as soon as possible. Set sail tomorrow.”
“As you say, Viceroy.”
“And make sure Korda and Red Beard don’t leave their accommodations. They are still guests but guests with restricted access. Bring them whatever they need to be comfortable.”
“Aye,” he says, and then sneezes. “Sorry. Perfume.”
“Yes, I need some air.”
We part: he to work, I to the blessedly scentless Tower of Kalaad to compose a missive for the king. Something along the lines of “We’ve been invaded, send help.”
I’ll have to summon the tactician and tell him to get his boys ready to fight lavaborn giants wearing the world’s strongest armor. And I’ll have to resume my own military exercises. There will be a necessary diplomatic dance before we trade blows, and if Kalaad smiles on us, maybe it will work. But it is more likely to end in death and wailing families of the fallen. Giants aren’t known for backing down until you drop them on their backs by force; sooner rather than later I’ll have to ride out and trip them up myself. Can’t stay here in my tower if I want to rule the country from a more pleasant spot than this backwater town that smells of borchatta guts and cabbage ass. No, when I ride out to deprive Gorin Mogen of his throne, it will assure me of mine … so long as we win.
I chuckled softly as Fintan dismissed the seeming of Melishev Lohmet. That little vignette would annoy both the Nentians and the Fornish. He certainly wasn’t holding back for fear of criticism. Looking down at the bleacher crowd, I saw many of them shaking their heads and discussing the viceroy with their companions. His opinions were odious, but many had laughed at the image of offering small chairs to the giants.
“Elsewhere in Ghurana Nent,” the bard said, “Abhinava Khose was making a new friend.” When he took on the young hunter’s seeming, he was bloody and bruised and his field bag hung in tatters from his shoulder.
I cannot explain why I still live. It makes no sense. I should be making my way through the digestive systems of about thirty bloodcats now, but instead I’m cursed to live a while longer.
The bloodcat that moved first stretched and stood on the branch, looked directly at me, then gave a short cry that was almost a bark, waking up the others. The branches of the nughobe trees around me writhed, the rest of the bloodcats revealing themselves once they moved. Their ears, pointed triangles with tufts at the tips, rose above their heads as they saw me. Without moving anything but my head, I noted that they were on all sides and must be behind me as well.
They were beautiful creatures. I had only seen dead ones before, their reddish-brown furs brought in by other hunting families that specialized in the dangers of nughobe groves. Bloodcats rarely strayed into the plains. But they possessed a more pleasing shape than grass pumas, more attractive pelts, faces that could be called cute until they revealed their teeth, and pointed, tufted ears that were almost adorable. The bloodred eyes that gave them their name were difficult to classify as kind, however.
One by one they descended from the branches, almost noiseless save for the noises they chose to make. They began to circle me clockwise, waiting for me to move or show fear, but I had none because I already counted myself dead. What I felt instead was grief for my family, sorrow that I would never see my sister smile again or my uncle tease my father or my aunt spontaneously decide that the best possible thing she could do was dance in the middle of the plains to music only she could hear. I wept and wished the bloodcats would hurry up and end it, but they kept circling and growling at me. I had never heard of such a thing.
“Come on!” I finally shouted at them, and that did it. Their muscles bunched and their ears flattened against their skulls, they hissed and charged. Sitting passively on a carpet of leaves, I should have been dead seconds afterward. The first one bowled me over flat onto my back, claws raking my chest, and then the rest of them descended to feed. But their teeth bit into my shoulders, arms, legs, and ribs, a single bite from each of them. None ever attempted to tear my flesh away, and none of them bit into my throat as they would have done instinctively if they wished to kill me. They bit and scratched and made me hurt everywhere, and then they all gathered together in front of me in a mess of fur, laid down in the leaves, and licked themselves as if they had no other pressing business. As if they had not just attacked and left me there to bleed.
I thought at first that perhaps I was delirious from blood loss and was hallucinating all this as I was being eaten and soon my vision would wink out and the nonsense would end. But no, the licking continued, and I would like to observe here that there is nothing quite so maddening as the loud lapping of genitals.
“What’s the matter?” I said to them. “Don’t I taste good?”
I received no answer, of course. And then I understood: I wasn’t giving them a chase. They wanted to hunt me. They were playing with their food as cats are fond of doing. That meant if I wanted to die, I’d have to get up and run for it. So I did: I staggered to my feet, lurched a few steps, and discovered that lurching was the best I could do with my injuries. I lurched straight away from them. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that a couple of the bloodcats had turned to watch me run, but most hadn’t even interrupted their ritualistic laving. Bewildered and feeling quite weak in any case, I stopped running. Perhaps they were simply not hungry and wanted me out of their nest, nothing more. Possible, I supposed, but unlikely; I had heard that bloodcats were extremely territorial. Their behavior was utterly baffling.
Still, having been given a reprieve, I resolved to behave as if I had a chance of surviving after all and putting my family to rest. My field bag was largely shredded, my water skins destroyed and my food eaten or lost, but it still held my journal and ink, the firestone, and the remnants of a blanket. It might allow me to return to the plains, make camp, and have nothing to worry about except scaring off a few blackwings in the morning. My spear could have easily survived the khern stampede, and maybe a few water skins remained as well, or at least a knife. I should be able to find someone’s knife near the wagon.
It was a very long series of lurches, during which I imagined that the bloodcats would simply track me down and finish me off when they were hungry again. Or something else, drawn by the scent of my blood, would put me out of my misery. I heard the yips and howls of a pack of wheat dogs approaching at one point, but after I hoped aloud that they wouldn’t find me, their cries veered off and faded in pursuit of something else. Kalaad must want me to live long enough to do right by my family.
I kept going in darkness, navigating a slow path by the stars peeking through the leaves. Once I reached the plains, I stopped, gathered some dead wood, and built a fire under the bran
ches of the last (or the first) nughobe tree. I had nothing to eat or drink, a body covered in scabbed wounds that might fester sooner rather than later, and only prayers to defend myself should anything wish to eat me.
The plains were silent, though, and having little else to do, I took out my journal and wrote by firelight, hoping that seeing these events put down in words would allow me to understand it all.
I can tell you now: writing didn’t help. I still don’t know why I’m alive.
There is a bloodcat curled up next to the fire directly across from me. A few minutes ago it approached from behind, purring deep in its throat, and when I turned and saw its red eyes glowing, I scrambled around the fire, putting the flames between myself and those teeth.
It was a laughable move. The bloodcat was much faster than me and could easily chase me down from one direction or another. But like the entire nest of them earlier—perhaps it was from the same nest—it had no interest in killing me. It sat down and regarded me with its head canted to one side as I stood on the balls of my feet, knees bent, ready to dodge one way or the other. Not that my injured leg would let me do much but shift a few inches in any direction.
“Don’t eat me,” I said, but the bloodcat only purred louder, then toppled over sideways and writhed in the tamped-down grass where I had been sitting, pawing the air as it scratched its back.
I looked around to see if anyone else was seeing what I was seeing, but of course I was alone. Alone with one of the most feared predators of the plains. Behaving adorably.
Perhaps it was a trick. A distraction. I stared into the darkness of the nughobe forest, but it was impenetrable, especially to my fire-blinded eyes. “Where are your friends?” I asked it. “The rest of your nest?”
The bloodcat stopped wiggling and came to rest right side up, its ears at attention as it looked at me. It swung its head back to the nughobes for a few seconds, returned its eyes to me, then looked away and sneezed.
“You’re here alone? You came to see me all by yourself?” I asked, then wondered why I was bothering to speak. But the cat rolled over, presenting its belly again, and made that low rolling noise of contentment in its throat.
“You are very strange,” I said, and the cat kicked out with its back legs as it stretched, pushing my journal and ink bottle a few inches away. Once I saw that, I wanted the journal in my hands to write this down so that proof would exist somewhere that such an encounter as this was possible. (And if I wake up later and check the journal and see these words in black and cream, I will know it really happened. And if they are not there at all, I will know it was a dream.)
“Hey. Mind if I come over there to pick that up?” I asked, pointing to the journal. The bloodcat righted itself, looked to where I was pointing, then got to its feet and moved a short distance away. Extraordinary. “Thanks,” I said, and cautiously moved around to pick up my journal, ink, and quills. Once they were in hand, I returned to where I’d been standing and sat down, flattening the grass beneath me, sitting with my back to the plains. The bloodcat watched all this, and when I was settled, it moved back to where it had been stretching, curled up, and placed its head on its paws, red eyes watching me. I began to write all this down, and at some point the bloodcat closed its eyes. I am not sure if it sleeps, but I have no desire to rouse it.
I wish that I could sleep so fearlessly out here. I don’t think I will sleep until my body gives me no other choice. We will see at dawn if the bloodcat is hungry.
The fire had burned down to a few red coals, and at some point I must have nodded off for a few minutes or hours. The bloodcat remained. I was still in one piece, felt somewhat better, and miraculously had not woken up covered in insect bites. The sun was not up, but the sky was gray and I could see well enough to move.
“Hey, friend,” I said, and the bloodcat’s eyes opened like two more coals and blinked. “I would like to visit my family now. Would that be all right with you?”
If it wanted to have me for breakfast, it could. But it stuck its rear in the air and stretched. I rose and did the same in a more human fashion. I hoped that if it let me live, I’d find some water; I was parched. That didn’t mean I had nothing in my bladder. I stepped away, turned my back, and took care of it, looking over my shoulder at the bloodcat. It was still occupied with loosening its muscles.
Finding the wreckage of the Khose train wouldn’t be difficult. The path of the kherns was clearly visible as a swath of flattened grasses not far from the nughobes. All I had to do was follow it back to where they’d smashed into the wagon.
When I finished, the bloodcat completed its morning stretch, yawned, and then looked at me almost expectantly, its tail swishing idly in the air. “Well? Shall we go together?” I said, pointing in the general direction of the wagon. “Or is this where we part company?” The bloodcat simply returned my stare, tail moving of its own volition. “All right, I’m going. Come along if you want,” I said.
I turned to the plains and began to walk, muscles tight but not as painful as the night before. I had improved from a lurch to a slight limp, and my arms had their full range of motion with only a few minor stinging complaints. I thought it remarkable to be feeling so well.
After twelve steps or so I heard the bloodcat move, only a whisper but still audible in the silence of the early dawn. An unmistakable hiss of liquid told me the animal had its own bodily functions to complete. What would it do next? Disappear back into the nughobes and rejoin its nest? Sprint at my back and bring me down?
It did neither of those things. Before I had taken another twenty steps I heard a soft whisper of grass grow louder, and then out of the corner of my right eye I spied movement. It was the bloodcat, keeping pace next to me a short distance away, tail held high and head up, sampling the air.
“You are the strangest creature I’ve ever met,” I said, “but I’m glad you’re here. I’d be all alone otherwise.”
It purred, though I don’t know at what. Surely not at my words.
A mess of boards and planks marked the site of my family’s end. The carcasses of the wart yaks lay prone, ribs already exposed to the air after a single afternoon and evening’s rest on the plains. The scavengers had been efficient and thorough. A couple of lingering blackwings crowed a lazy challenge at us, but they were full and had nothing to fight about. They flew away as the bloodcat and I approached.
The wagon had been splintered apart and its contents tumbled across the grass, but the contents hadn’t been completely annihilated. There were colorful pieces of cloth strewn about, wraps that belonged to my mother or aunt or sister. Cooking utensils such as spoons and pots. I found a small knife suitable for peeling roots and palmed it in case I couldn’t find anything better. A minute later I found a spear—my spear, in fact, recognizable by the dyed red leather strips wrapped around the base of the head. When I bent to pick it up, the bloodcat growled. I dropped it immediately, and the bloodcat fell silent. It stared at me, not exactly aggressive but not as relaxed as it had been earlier. Vigilant might be the word.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I left it behind for a reason. But I need a better knife than this puny thing if I’m going to survive.” Odd, I thought, to be thinking about survival past the next hour or so.
I searched for the box that held our water skins and eventually found it, ruined and splintered but still vaguely boxlike. It must have been tossed in the air when the wagon came apart and never directly trampled, so it had provided just enough protection to the skins inside that they still held water. There were three of them. Not enough to cook or wash with but enough to drink if I did nothing but walk straight back to Khul Bashab. I drank half of one before I felt sated.
Continuing to salvage what I could, I found a field bag in better shape than mine and transferred my few possessions to it, adding in the water skins and a few other items, mostly dry food. The bloodcat sat down and watched me pick through the wreckage.
“You are very patient,” I told it, bu
t it behaved as if I hadn’t spoken at all. The sun had fully risen and warmed the air perceptibly by the time I could no longer delay the ushering of my family to the sky.
Since I had seen the path my parents had taken, I walked in that direction first, locating my father after less than ten lengths. He was nothing but bones and rags and a stain in the grass now, his flesh all pecked and torn away. He’d banished me from the family but hadn’t deserved this in return. Tears in my eyes and then trailing down my face, I tipped my head back until I nearly fell backward, staring straight up at the cloudless blue.
“Kalaad in the sky, I give you my father, who thought his son must hunt if he was to be a good son but who did love me and my family and made sure we prospered for all our days together. He is dead because I distracted him from hunting. Maybe he was right and I am not a good son. But that does not matter so much as that he is blameless and deserves to be at peace.”
I hoped I was doing it right; I’d never been old enough to give anyone to the sky before. I’d seen my parents do it for their parents and my uncle do it for his father, but that was years ago and I could barely remember.
My mother’s tunic had been a bright pink and was easy to find in the grass along with her remains. I cried over her, and when I thought I could keep my voice steady, I looked up to address Kalaad. “I give you my mother, who bore me and fed me and kept me in her heart for all her days. Now I will keep her in my heart for the rest of mine. May you keep her safe and free from pain for all time.”
It was not a day for me to be free from pain. Walking in the other direction and sniffling, I found the rest of my family, cried for them all, gave them all to Kalaad in the sky. My aunt and uncle, my cousins, my sister. None of them survived. I took all their hunting knives and left their spears in the grass. I needed only one knife, but they were made of fine Hathrim steel and I could probably sell the extra ones for necessities if I made it back. The bloodcat accompanied me as I visited each corpse and said the words, and it remained silent when I took the knives and placed them in my field bag.